Day in the Life 13021, Yet Another Day with the Dentist (explained) and some archival bits (plus others, surely, though maybe just the hummus)

BLOT: (22 Jan 2013 - 09:29:10 PM)

Day in the Life 13021, Yet Another Day with the Dentist (explained) and some archival bits (plus others, surely, though maybe just the hummus)

I am typing this up through tmux (or well, through Vim via tmux) and it is a novel enough experience that I figured I'd mention it. Me and tmux aren't besties, just yet, but I'm liking it enough. I've been doing the old saw of opening up multiple SSH windows to do more complex things, and that's is just stupid (especially with long stable programs like GNU-screen about, anyhow) and lately thought I'd dive in, get a fuller experience. tl;dr version: Doug is doing geek things on the commandline.

Was back at the dentist today. It was so-so. A shorter as-in-an-hour visit rather than longer as-in-three-hours-plus one. I was getting my permanent crown put in, something I hinted at almost exactly two weeks ago, and so the hard part—preparing the tooth for the crown—had passed. Things were (are) a bit sensitive still, so it actually hurt to have the temp removed and the extra bits scraped away, today. The new crown is nice, though. It feels less like a tooth and more like a angular approximation of a tooth, but it is strong, the cement works fine, and I can chew food on that side without getting the fear, again. I have one or two more appointments for fillings and the like, and then I probably won't be seeing him but once or twice a year on out. Good times.

For those who wonder why the dentist comes up, especially enough for me to come with a phrase like YADwtD, it comes down to the nature working with nurture argument. Humans are crappy at taking care of their own teeth (nature). We were already an old species when we came up with toothbrushes and toothpastes, and were kind of a young one when we came up with sweets, starchy foods, and alcoholic cocktails. This is why lecturing parents (nurture) are important. My parents, when only a few years older than me, both had their natural teeth removed and got false teeth, because it was simpler than continuing to care for what teeth they had. We were told about brushing, though it was in no way enforced, not really about flossing, and not really about rinsing. In fact, in kindergarten, my mom got me out of the morning fluoride rinse program [after I complained about the taste]. I was used by the teacher as an example of an incorrect lifestyle, at five years of age, because of how I did not care about myself. Let's take a moment and remember my bitch of a kindergarten teacher, who felt it was better to mock me as a five-year-old, presumably so that I would cave in to peer pressure of a sort, rather than to try and to explain to me why I was wrong. At any rate, speaking of bad lifestyle choices learned at an early age, my breakfast, at that time, was often a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Sometimes two. You get what I am saying, here.

By the age of 35, I had picked up a number of cavities. Though I was starting to take care of my teeth, enough damage was done that about once every year or two I would have a tooth just collapse. Right about my 35th birthday, I decided to step it up. We had dental insurance. And we started getting cleanings and cleaning up the mistakes. We are now, a year-ish later, about 2/3s done. And it has been a lot of pain and bother, but I'm glad. In fact, the tooth that I got crowned today has been a constant source of literal headaches for years. At least four or five. I'll be glad to see the back of that.

For things more bookish than toothish, I will helping an appraiser sort through an archival collection we have at UAH: one donated by Bud Cramer. Lots of letters and books and congressional notes and gifts and stuff. I think the count is 600 boxes. I'm on hand sort of as the heavy lifter, the gofer, but it still sounds cool to be on the down-and-dirty side of archive work. Today I found that these 600 boxes are stored on shelves that are not very far part and are crammed together. Crammed up high and thin in a way that one would imagine only Slenderman would be properly built to access. Tomorrow there will be a lot of tight squeezes for me. Had I known this beforehand, I might have bowed out, but now I figure I'll just play the stretch-and-not-get-stuck game. Besides, it is not so often that one gets to be a real life Jamesian/Lovecraftian character. Maybe I'll find some picture with eldritch significance, or a diary about some secret cult. *crosses fingers*

Before I go, briefly wanted to discuss making some hummus from peeled chickpeas that my friend Becca linked to a recipe (see: this link) for. There are lots of comments of people saying that it changed their life, and Becca is smitten with it, so it definitely has its fans. Overall, my impression is *shrug*. It's good, but not better than whole chickpea hummus. For my tastes, and my wife's, it is actually poorer. Sarah and I both like the bits, the irregularities. Homogeneity is for store bought pudding and eugenicists*. In this case, the creaminess of the recipe really doesn't make up for the loss of fiber not complexity from losing the shell, nor justifying tripling/quadrupling the production time (though if you cook the chickpeas from scratch, this ratio might be different). It did lead me to tossing in a couple of chipotles, though, which I highly recommend. And there is some debate whether or not peeled chickpeas are more authentic, so keep that grain of salt in mind. I just noticed that the shells impart a bit of flavor (you can eat them while working on the recipe) and that flavor loss is possibly why she increases the tahini ratio to double what many recipes call for. I do like sprinkling the oil over it at the end, though, and would back up that aspect

And I guess that is it. Part of this archive hat wearing will involve getting up about three hours earlier so I can be at work something like five hours earlier. I guess that's a trade of sorts. Hopefully it will all work out fine. But at any rate, I'm going to bed.

* Just to contextualize my claim, let me also go on record saying I like good, gritty cornbread with real cornmeal and that I consider perfectly even pancakes to be only fit for people who hate food. Who fear it, even.

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: January 2013